Illustration Friday - Linked

This week's Illustration Friday word is "Linked."  Once again, a lot of ideas came to mind - Links of chain tying a ship to a dock with a family of rats scurrying up the links, links in a daisy chain, a line of elephants with each elephant linking their trunks to the tail in front of them, two tigers walking side by side with their tails linked, a chain-link fence separating two friends.  But the word "linked" can also mean a bond between two things or two people.  After all, how many times have we heard the phrase "romantically linked?" I wasn't in the mood though to do something romantic.  Besides, I've been wanting to have more pictures of children in my portfolio so this led me to my final idea.  I began thinking of friendship and from there I thought about what better way to illustrate the word than to have two children, bonded by friendship, whose arms are linked as they walk their dogs.

The final art was done in Corel Painter 11.  I'm including two sketches.  The first one is a very loose, quick sketch that I did in my sketch book and then scanned.  The second sketch is a digital pencil sketch done in Painter.  This second sketch is a cleaned-up version of the first looser sketch.  It is this more refined sketch that I used as my guide to the finished art.